The Boston Diaries

Something I've been meaning to blog about since September 12th
(I think—it may have been since September 5th). Mondays I do
the weekly grocery shopping and while at Costco saw the (sadly) obligatory
Christmas decorations on sale.

“You know the rules,” he said. “You have to make it sound like
good news.”

I thought for a few moments. “We can save electricity by turning off
this server,” I said, pointing to one of the boxes in the office.

“It doesn't work?”

“No,” I said.

“It was hacked?” asked Smirk.

“'Fraid so,” I said.

I only noticed because the network to the office went down. I could ping
other boxes in the office, but couldn't get past the firewall. I then went
into the data center, logged onto one of the servers and yes, I could still
get out to the Internet (relief there). But I couldn't ping the firewall
from outside.

I then checked the firewall, and it was still up and running. If I unplug
the office network, I could ping the firewall from the outside. Plug the
office network in, and it gets swamped.

So something on our network was spamming the network.

Spent the next few minutes plugging and unplugging various bits of the
office network until I isolated the culprit—the system that monitors the
servers and network.

Of course!

It was at that point that I broke the news to Smirk.

Once it was unplugged, I start poking the machine and yup, there was this
odd process: “./s 202.XXX.XXX.XXX”. It was pretty
easy to locate the actual executable under /dev/shm/http/,
which is normally not a place for executables. The process was
running as the apache user, and the files under
/dev/shm/http were owned by apache, which to me,
is a rather obvious clue that it was Apache was the vector of the
exploit.

Among the files in /dev/shm/http/ were configuration files
to a hacked IRC bot (which was named
s) and some other program (named httpd—not sure
what that was) and a few scripts to start things up and to clean the log
files (which the cracker had not bothered to run). The hacked up IRC bot would just sit there until
commanded to participate in a DDoS attack, which obviously was the cause of the sudden
network activity, aimed at a site in Japan.

But how? How did this person get in?

More poking around the system lead to a rather curious request just a few
minutes before I lost network connectivity (due to the firewall being
swamped)—it was a request to Cacti, a data storage and graphic package
with a web based interface written in PHP (why does that not surprise me?). It
seems we had fallen prey to a Raxnet
Cacti graph_image.php Remote Command Execution Exploit,
which basically means the cracker was able to send a command to the server,
in this case, a command that would download a perl script and execute it,
opening up a shell to a remote connection. It was through this that the
hacked programs were uploaded and started.

Fortunately, this is the only system running Cacti, and second, there was
no trust mechanism to any other machine on the network from this machine.
And third, this is a machine that we only log in to, never log in
from, so any damage was limited to just this machine.

I did a bit of stock trading back during the Internet Boom (and made
enough to get a car and take it easy for a while, more due to timing than
skill) so it's pretty easy to see the scam here (and yes, I get these stock
spams too). A scammer buys a penny stock (a large volume of penny stock),
hawks it like there's no tomorrow (because, really, there isn't) and sells
it as soon as it upticks a few cents.

One thing to note: I thought that I would realize temporary
windfalls on all penny stocks, but then see big losses. Instead
almost ALL of those stocks I added went up a few cents max, then
dropped like flies the next day. So much for short term gains.

One thing to consider—these are cheap! Picking one from his
list, HTSC.PK. Purchase price was 19¢ per share. Even if
it goes up 3¢, for 20,000 shares ($3,800) that's still $600 profit, and
two such trades per week isn't that bad a take (and the Spam Stock Tracker
“bought” it at 19¢—the spammer probably got it for a cent or two
less).

An interesting strategy might be to “buy” the stock early in the
morning, then “sell” just before the markets close the same day, and see
how well one does.

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Lots of hype. Lots of spammy influences too.

So, out of these sixteen spams I got today, only four different stocks
were being hawked. I checked them out and made a few guesses as to when the
spammers may have bought the stock (I assumed the lowest price during the
past five days).

That last stock, IGTS.PK, had two spikes in the past five days, so for
that one, I'm including both spikes. Also, it's that last one that offers
the most profit of all the stocks, simply because of the sheer volume of
stock one can get cheaply.

Hypothetical profits from each stock, buying at most $1,000.00
worth of each

Symbol

# Shares

Buy cost

Sell amount

Profit

CWTD.OB

512

998.40

1,100.80

102.40

ASCE.PK

1,333

999.75

1,199.70

199.95

CEOA.PK

363

998.25

1,488.30

490.05

IGTS.PK

166,666

1,000.00

3,999.98

2,999.98

62,500

1,000.00

1,312.50

312.50

So, buy some cheap penny stocks, send out a few million spams and wait a
day or so for the price to rise, then sell. Two or three trades a week and
you can make a decent living it looks like.

Since yesterday, I've recieved yet another 9 stock spams, three for GBIC.PK,
three for AXCP.PK, two for TOTG.OB and
one still hawking for CEOA.PK. The ones I started tracking yesterday have
pretty much flatlined, while the new ones today appear to have picked up a
bit, but I expect them too, to level off.

Looking at the graphs over the past five days, you can almost get a feel
for when the spammer may have bought the stock (usually a large volume with
a good price inrease) but what's not so easy to pick out is when the spammer
sold the stock (and for the case of CEOA.PK, I suspect the spammer is still
trying to get movement on that, or this spamming engine is way
behind).

I'm guessing that even if one where to try to outguess the stock spammers
at their own game, it won't be easy. Another thought I had, in relation to
the obscenely cheap penny stocks—wouldn't the very act of buying,
say, 200,000 shares cause the price to raise? At which point, sell. Even
if the act may only rise the price ½¢ it's still a $1,000
profit. But, in thinking more about this, if that were true,
wouldn't more people engage in that? Or am I discounting the amount of
greed in stock traders?

Yesterday, I had the distinct pleasure of learning just how braindead a
Riverstone Networks RS 3000 switch/router can be (and that is a post unto itself).

I also had the distinct pleasure of renumbering (assigning new IP addresses) a thousand sites
(literally—I ended up renumbering 1,200 websites), a process that didn't
go quite as smoothly as I had wished. This mess started about two weeks ago
when R (I manage a few servers for him) informed me that his largest
customer (who has the aformentioned 1,200 websites) wanted distinct IP addresses for each one. That meant I
first had to secure enough IP
addresses and get them routed to the server, which took most of the
time.

Meanwhile, I was sent a list of sites from the customer, which was smaller
(by about oh … 300 or so) than the actual list of sites on the webserver.
So now I had to reconsile both my list and the customer list. I ended up
with five lists:

sites that were in both lists

sites that I need to add

sites that I had, but the customer didn't list

sites that had expired (domain registration expired)

sites that were no longer hosted with us (found via DNS queries)

Then there was the back-and-forth exchange with the customer that boiled
down to: keep all sites (even expired and those that no longer point to the
server) and give as many sites their own IP address as possible (I ended up giving the first two
lists their own IP, with the
last three lists sharing a few addresses).

Then last night was the Great Renumbering.

One thousand (plus) sites. Five lists. Making sure I keep a record of
which site gets which address. And yes, it was rough. I started at 2:00 am
(technically very early this morning) and ended at around 3:30 am,
spending the hour and a half running custom Perl scripts, generating
DNS zone files and an Apache
configuration file. Messed up a few times—mixing up two lists,
forgetting to update the serial number in a zone file, simple mistakes like
that.

Then at 7:30 am I get a call from the customer. A couple of domains seem
to be down. Stumble over to the computer, log into the server, and find out
that I forgot to run one of the lists (no wonder the new configuration file
seemed a bit small). Oh, and DNS for a few domains was borked (about six zones out of
1,200 had some custom records). I was surprised at how few sites got broken
during the process (and given that the customer was confused about what
sites where active, it's even more amazing).

See, yesterday, all I wanted to
do was assign an unused port on the Riverstone
Networks RS 3000 from one VLAN to another. Actually, two unused ports, but it's
something that, for a switch, should be rather uncomplicated.

Now, the Riverstone Networks RS 3000 works much like a Cisco router—you
log in and can type commands at the command line prompt, and even change the
configuration through the command line. It will even walk you through the
command lines, showing you which options are valid at any point in the
command line.

It will even allow you to group ports together into a command. For
instance, on our Riverstone Networks RS 3000, a default setting for all the
ports are set with one command:

port set et.(1-2).(1-16) speed 100mbps duplex full auto-negotiation off

This sets all 16 ports on the two Ethernet modules to a known setting.
And if you need to set a port differently, well …

port set et.(1-2).(1-16) speed 100mbps duplex full auto-negotiation off
port set et.2.8 speed 10mbps duplex half auto-negotiation off
port set et.1.3 auto-negotiation on

So you can set a default, then override later on in the
configuration.

This will automagically set up routing between the two VLANs so far thus defined.

Now, here's where things get interesting. You can assign ports to a
VLAN simply
enough:

vlan add ports et.(1-2).(1-16) to TheCompanyVLAN1

This assigns all the ports on the Riverstone Networks RS 3000 to VLANTheCompanyVLAN1. So just like the port speeds and
descriptions, it so far looks like you can assign a default VLAN to each port, and then
override it futher down in the configuation:

One would think that, but one would be horribly
wrong! Muahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! YOU
CAN'T DO THAT! Muahahahahahahahahahaha! (and here the hero has
his face eaten off by a zombie—the audience is going “told you so! Told
you not to go into that basement!”)

Try to do that, and the Riverstone Networks RS 3000 will complain
bitterly about ports et.1.4 and et.2.4 belonging to VLANTheCompanyVLAN1. You just
can't assigned a default VLAN, then reassign it later (unless it's a trunk
port, but then a a trunked port can be assigned to multiple VLANs, and I didn't want that).
No, you have to assign each port once to a VLAN.

BUT YOU'RE SCREWED! The Riverstone Networks RS
3000 will complain about the ports already being part of
TheCompanyVLAN1 so it'll ignore the reassignments of the ports
to the same VLAN,
it'll bitch about ports et.1.4 and et.2.4 being
reassigned, but since you commented out the line that assigns all the ports
to TheCompanyVLAN1, it'll then nock the ports out of that
VLAN (and here, the
hero is now a shambling zombie, stalking his girlfriend to eat her face
off).

And if you're unlucky, you'll do this on a live network.

And then all the phones on your desk will start ringing off the hook.

And your cell phone will start ringing.

And you're running around, trying to figure out why the network suddenly
took a dump when all you're doing to trying to reconfigure two unused ports
to a new VLAN.

And if you're not, all the phones on your desk will start ringing off the
hook.

And your cell phone will start ringing.

And you're running around, trying to figure out why the network suddenly
took a dump when all you're doing to trying to reconfigure two unused ports
to a new VLAN
(mmmmmmmmmm—brains).

So, the lesson I'm trying to impart here?

Riverstone Networks RS 3000s suck!

But, if you are in the position of having to use them, then you
might want to think ill of grouping ports as part of a command and apply
each command to each port separately. Then you stand less of a chance of
knocking multiple ports off a VLAN.

Oh, and one more thing. Riverstone Networks RS 3000s are not known to
boot fast. Oh no. They take their time. They take at least three minutes
to fully boot. Three minutes may not seem like a long time, but when all
the phones on your desk are ringing and your cell phone is ringing, three
minutes is a XXXXXXXETERNITY! It's even worse if you have to run to
the other side of the building to find a computer you can use to log into
the Riverstone Networks RS 3000.

Me? Bitter?

Did I mention that the Riverstone Networks RS 3000 sucks?

[Note to Smirk: I'm not saying we should replace
the Riverstone Networks RS 3000, since it's there, it runs, and can
otherwise handle the traffic we're throwing at it. I'm just venting a bit
at the sheer braindeathness of the software running the darned
thing.]

Just got a bit closer to resolving the email situation (yes, it's still in the
process of being resolved two weeks after it started). I just now received
a call from AbuseBob, who works for the Abuse Department at The Monopolistic
Phone Company. Nice guy, and he confirmed that not only is the one server
being blocked, but that another server our customer has has also sent spam.
He would like to work with us, but we need to make sure we're filtering spam
before it gets sent to The Monopolistic Phone Company email servers.

And for a fan based film, made over the past six years or so, the quality is
surprisingly good (especially the special effects, which rival those found
on both Star Trek and Babylon 5) and the battle sequence is suspenseful
right up until the very end.

AGREEMENT AMONG THE TRACK GUIDANCE MODELS...WHICH HAD BEEN VERY GOOD
OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS...HAS COMPLETELY COLLAPSED TODAY. THE
06Z RUNS OF THE GFS...GFDL...AND NOGAPS MODELS ACCELERATED WILMA
RAPIDLY TOWARD NEW ENGLAND UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF A LARGE LOW
PRESSURE SYSTEM IN THE GREAT LAKES REGION. ALL THREE OF THESE
MODELS HAVE BACKED OFF OF THIS SOLUTION...WITH THE GFDL SHOWING AN
EXTREME CHANGE...WITH ITS 5-DAY POSITION SHIFTING A MERE 1650 NMI
FROM ITS PREVIOUS POSITION IN MAINE TO THE WESTERN TIP OF CUBA.
THERE IS ALMOST AS MUCH SPREAD IN THE 5-DAY POSITIONS OF THE 12Z
GFS ENSEMBLE MEMBERS...WHICH RANGE FROM THE YUCATAN TO WELL EAST OF
THE DELMARVA PENINSULA. WHAT THIS ILLUSTRATES IS THE EXTREME
SENSITIVITY OF WILMA'S FUTURE TRACK TO ITS INTERACTION WITH THE
GREAT LAKES LOW. OVER THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS...WILMA HAS BEEN
MOVING SLIGHTLY TO THE LEFT OR SOUTH OF THE MODEL GUIDANCE...AND
THE LEFT-MOST OF THE GUIDANCE SOLUTIONS ARE NOW SHOWING WILMA
DELAYING OR MISSING THE CONNECTION WITH THE LOW. I HAVE SLOWED THE
OFFICIAL FORECAST JUST A LITTLE BIT AT THIS TIME...BUT IF WILMA
CONTINUES TO MOVE MORE TO THE LEFT THAN EXPECTED...SUBSTANTIAL
CHANGES TO THE OFFICIAL FORECAST MAY HAVE TO BE MADE DOWN THE LINE.
NEEDLESS TO SAY...CONFIDENCE IN THE FORECAST TRACK...ESPECIALLY THE
TIMING...HAS DECREASED CONSIDERABLY.

I stepped into the living room to see what everyone was watching. On the
screen, one Chinese guy was jabbering (in Chinese, with English sub-titles)
about the applications of Kung-fu on everyday life. “If she knew
Kung-fu,” said the guy, pointing to a girl slipping on a banana peel in
exagerated slow motion, “she wouldn't fall down.” The other guy, a older
man, half drunk and staggering around, wasn't convinced.

I wasn't convinced either, so I stood around, not watching the rest of the film about Shaolin monks playing soccer
(see, if I don't sit down, I'm not watching a film, even if I do end up
standing around not watching the film to the very end).

It had this quirky humor to it and while the plot was very predictable
(a film, about a group of misfits,
forming a team, to play some form of sport—not hard to see how this
ends) but with such films, it's how the subject matter is presented, and
it was good enough to have me stand around not watching the film (okay, I
was amused when the two Shaolin Monks were singing at a bar).

WILMA IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHEAST NEAR 18 MPH...30 KM/HR. A
CONTINUED NORTHEASTWARD MOTION... WITH A GRADUAL INCREASE IN FORWARD
SPEED... IS EXPECTED TONIGHT AND MONDAY. ON THIS TRACK...THE CENTER
OF WILMA IS FORECAST TO MAKE LANDFALL ALONG THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST
OF THE FLORIDA PENINSULA EARLY MONDAY MORNING. HOWEVER... WILMA IS
A LARGE HURRICANE AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS WILL REACH THE
FLORIDA PENINSULA WELL BEFORE THE EYE MAKES LANDFALL. THE EASTERN
PORTION OF THE EYEWALL... ACCOMPANIED BY THE STRONGEST WINDS...
WILL REACH THE SOUTHWESTERN COAST OF FLORIDA ABOUT 2 HOURS BEFORE
THE CENTER OF THE LARGE EYE MAKES LANDFALL.
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 115 MPH...185 KM/HR...WITH HIGHER
GUSTS. WILMA IS A CATEGORY THREE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON
SCALE. LITTLE CHANGE IN STRENGTH IS EXPECTED UNTIL LANDFALL OCCURS
...AND WILMA WILL LIKELY MAKE LANDFALL AS A CATEGORY 3 HURRICANE.
SOME SLOW WEAKENING IS FORECAST AS WILMA CROSSES THE SOUTHERN
FLORIDA PENINSULA... BUT THE HURRICANE IS FORECAST TO STILL BE A
SIGNIFICANT CATEGORY TWO HURRICANE BY THE TIME THE CENTER REACHES
THE FLORIDA EAST COAST EARLY MONDAY AFTERNOON.
HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 85 MILES...140 KM...
FROM THE CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP
TO 230 MILES...370 KM. SUSTAINED TROPICAL STORM-FORCE WINDS ARE
OCCURRING OVER THE YUCATAN CHANNEL... WESTERN CUBA... AND THE LOWER
AND MIDDLE FLORIDA KEYS. THESE WINDS SHOULD REACH THE SOUTHWESTERN
FLORIDA COAST BY MIDNIGHT... WITH HURRICANE-FORCE WINDS REACHING
THE LOWER KEYS AND SOUTHWESTERN FLORIDA COAST BEFORE SUNRISE.

We survived Hurricane Wilma. Casa New Jersey weathered the storm nicely (if
a bit leaky around two uncaucked windows). In fact, the only thing that
took damage were trees and a small ding in my car—from what, I don't know.

We have no power at the moment. I'm at the office right now, making sure
everything is running smoothly (Smirk picked me up on the way). Oh, and
it's nice and cool now.

I supose that if you have read the above, then there is no need to call
about your power outage in the first place. But on the first day of
restoring power, FPL still has two million customers
without power, mainly due to down tramission lines (the huge powerlines
running down the middle of the state that power substations).

We're still without power at Casa New Jersey, along with 663,500 other
FPL customers. The only
reason you're seeing this is because I'm at the data center, which has its
own generator. I'm on one of the few Windows servers here, sharing it with
P. The Office itself is without power and phone, making for (the most part)
a quiet day here, other than the stray office worker asking if they can
install a server or have critical people set up a workstation so they can
work (three companies so far). The problem is that we're near capacity with
the generator and have only two days worth of fuel and we're having to
shutdown down non-critical machines. Smirk and J (the other partner in the
data center) are off to North Florida on a quest for diesel fuel just in
case FPL are unable to
restore power to the office building in two days.

So, other than the severe lack of power, a severe shortage of open gas
stations and a bazillion trees littering the streets of Boca Raton, things
are pretty good.

The serious lack of power is really annoying, and not just because I can't
get my daily net fix …

Okay, it's because I can't get my daily net fix.

But when the official word from FPL is
November 11th for 95% of customers in Palm Beach County, it's
disheartening. Worse still, where we live, we don't have FPL, we have Lake
Worth Power which probably just probably resells power from FPL. When I called (and their
main number refered me to an 800 number, which when called, just transfered
me back to their main number—sigh) they said anywhere from two to six
weeks to have power restored. I don't have high hopes to have power back
any time soon.

Hopefully the weather will remain nice and cool as it has been since
Hurricane Wilma passed.

But we're doing fine so far. Wlofie was able to cobble up a make-shift
stove with bricks and the inner rim of a wheel and the stainlesscarbon steel wok
he has is incredibly versatile in what it can do (not only stir fry, but
Wlofie was able to cook rice in the thing).

Wlofie is also amazed at the number of people trying to buy charcoal,
when all around us is a huge amount of free fuel for the taking. Sure, the
wood is still green, but it's usuable (if a bit smokey).

He also had the forsight to buy several lanterns for use as light. They
work quite well.

I also kept myself occupied last night by playing around with coroutines on
paper. Yes, even without power I'm a power geek.

Update on Tuesday, November 1st, 2005

Wlofie sent in the following corrections for this entry:

Carbon steel actually. Stainless would have burned the rice most
likely. Stainless doesn't distribute the heat as well, nor handle
the hear, nor in fact does seasoning because of the nonstick
layer.

Heh, nor does stainless rust as much as non-cared for carbon
still will LOL.

He also had the forsight to buy several lanterns for use
as light. They work quite well.

Credit where credit is due ... I didn't buy, you did. I merely
gave the recommendation.

I forgot I actually bought the lamps. Continuing:

BTW, I'm not amazed at coal
buying ... just surprised people don't save the resources of wood
as well (in addition to coal).

Shurgs.

Coal is a transported resource, the wood is just there ... and
running coal until it's out and then wood ... well, by that time the
wood is more than likely a little less ``sappy.''

Our biggest problem durring the first half of the storm were leaks around
a few windows—one upstairs and one in the master bedroom. Other than
that, nothing horrible happened to the house.

Durring the eye of the hurricane (yes yes, I know, we're not supposed to
leave the house durring the eye):

And here's the bamboo in our backyard durring the eye of the storm:

And after the second half of the storm:

There aren't any pictures durring the second half of the storm since I
elected at that point to just sleep through the rest. As it happened, the
second half had less rain but the wind kicked it up a notch and
more damage happened during the second half than the first, with Boca Raton
(where I work) getting ravaged:

P and I are trading off days to conserve fuel and frankly, with the phone
system down at the office (not that I'm complaining about that, but I'm sure
our customers are) and the notice that support has been cut back due to
Hurricane Wilma, it's been rather quiet in the office.

I've got a power cord running from the data center into the Office so I can
use my workstation. I did use a Windows system in the data center on
Monday, but given the power situtation, it's dark, noisy, cold and dude!
Windows! And since it is cool outside, the temperature inside the office is
rather nice. So no real complaints here.

I got into the office around 10 am (yearly yes, but hey, given that
there's very little to do at night but sleep … ) and across the street was
a line of cars stretching waaaaaaaay back all waiting for free
ice.

The company that shares space in our data center has set up operations in
the hall outside the data center, since that's still the only room with
power and our Office can barely hold three people much less a dozen. It
looks remarkably like a blogging conference out there, with temporary tables
and everybody busily working away on laptops.

Smirk returned with over 200
gallons of diesel fuel for the generator so we're good as far as fuel goes, but the generator is being
watched closely to prevent it from overheating. Smirk also got food for
everyone here as he found an open McDonald's across the street from his
house (even though his house is still without power).

Found the following email in the support account today. I found it rather
amusing.

Stay Safe During Hurricane Wilma

If you are up as early as I am preparing for Wilma … Good
Morning!

First and foremost, let me please ask everyone to stay safe and
take the necessary precautions to protect your family and
property.

The Florida Power Team cares very much about you; we send our
warmest wishes to you and your family during this time.

We are all looking for Wilma to blow through quickly so we may
all get on with our outstanding, fantastic, passionate, loving,
joyful, prosperous, challenging, balanced and fulfilling lives
(obviously the list could go on)!

Earlier Wlofie asked if I liked eggs and could we do something with the
dozen and a half we had socked away in the freezer temporary ice
chest. I'm not a big egg fan but I do like the occastional omlette or
sunny-side up, but not 18 eggs worth of omlette or sunny-side
up.

So I suggested Deviled Eggs. Hard boil, cut lengthwise, scoop out the
now cooked yoke, mix with mayonnaise and dill, scoop the mixture back into
the cut eggs, dust with paprika, eat. It's the only form of egg that I can
just keep on eating and with our crew, it didn't last the night.

The kids are going through batteries like you wouldn't believe, what with
their various variations on the Game Boy and what not. I found one of their
units in the mailbox—apparently they were too lazy to actually take the
thing inside while they rode their bicycles.

I'm still working on co-routines to keep
myself occupied, keeping the
midnight oil burning (in this case, literally—kerosene lamp right on my
deskd) as I work through an implementation. It's an interesting concept, a
routine that is almost, but not entirely like, a thread but where multiple
calls result in the co-routine picking up where it left off and not starting
over again. Once we get power back I'll write up a longer entry explaining
what I've been working on (since my notes are on my desk at home, and right
now I'm at work writing up the past few days).

On Monday night, after Hurricane Wilma blew past, the sky was clear and
for the first time since I can remember, the night sky was ablaze with
stars, and even the faint Milky Way could be seen stretching across the sky.
It was a beautiful sight and one that was repeated Tuesday night. But since
Wednesday, the stars are slowly being washed out with the dawn of
civilization as power is slowly restored to South Florida.

Spring, Wlofie
and The Kids went to Negiyo (she to work, they to hang out someplace with
power and more importantly, Internet) and I elected to hang out in
the office.

Net fix, you see.

Only I didn't get much of a fix.

About an hour later, Smirk and I went out in search of food and petrol
and that alone took the better part of two hours. And back at the office,
Mark was looking to hang out, so the three of us spent hours talking about
various topics, including generators, Negiyo and war stories from FAU. By the time Mark left, it was time to pick up Spring
& Co. from Negiyo.

Got the office machines up and running, then answered the remaining
support tickets, and have spent the rest of the day surfing the Internet and
really beinging to hate Lake
Worth Power. You can tell the border between Lake Worth Power and FPL because on the FPL side it's all lit nice and bright, and on the Lake
Worth Power side it's still North Korea.

Sigh.

For Hallow'een this year, Spring (dressed as a drag queen) is
taking The Kids (Death and an unemployed Jawa) to the Mall for
Trick-or-Treating.

Obligatory Miscellaneous

You have my permission to link freely to any entry here. Go
ahead, I won't bite. I promise.

The dates are the permanent links to that day's entries (or
entry, if there is only one entry). The titles are the permanent
links to that entry only. The format for the links are
simple: Start with the base link for this site: http://boston.conman.org/, then add the date you are
interested in, say 2000/08/01,
so that would make the final URL:

You may also note subtle shading of the links and that's
intentional: the “closer” the link is (relative to the
page) the “brighter” it appears. It's an experiment in
using color shading to denote the distance a link is from here. If
you don't notice it, don't worry; it's not all that
important.

It is assumed that every brand name, slogan, corporate name,
symbol, design element, et cetera mentioned in these pages is a
protected and/or trademarked entity, the sole property of its
owner(s), and acknowledgement of this status is implied.